Improving School Culture
How Can School Culture Be Improved?
Improving school culture is a multi-layered, long-term effort that involves strengthening adult culture, student experience, community partnerships, and systems of accountability and support. In other words, school culture isn't just about staff morale or student behavior—it’s about how a school feels and functions for everyone, every day.
Restorative Practices Training offers a powerful, research-backed framework to shift culture from compliance and isolation to connection and collective responsibility. These practices give school communities concrete tools to build trust, repair harm, and elevate student voice, while also supporting adults to work through conflict, communicate more effectively, and stay aligned in purpose.
A healthy school culture includes:
Strong adult-to-adult relationships, including admin-to-teacher and teacher-to-support staff
Strong relationships between adults and students
Systems that support connection, not just correction
Proactive routines that build community and prevent harm
Fair and consistent expectations
A sense of emotional and physical safety
Structures for shared ownership and student agency
Restorative Practices address all of these domains, helping schools move beyond surface-level fixes to deep, lasting change.
Emphasize the Importance of Face-to-Face Interactions
While face-to-face interactions can strengthen relationships, school culture shifts require more than proximity—they require intention. In schools, that means having rituals and routines that center connection: daily community-building circles, regular relationship check-ins, structured time for collaboration among staff, and reliable opportunities for feedback and reflection. This helps promote all of the essential elements of a positive school culture.
Implement Restorative Practices to Build Relationships and Community
Restorative Practices provide a proactive, systemic way to build the conditions where everyone feels seen, heard, and valued. When implemented across a school, not just in response to conflict, they embed trust into the school day. Practices like affective statements, community circles, and structured re-entry processes allow for emotional regulation, student voice, and stronger problem-solving.
When done with fidelity, schools see measurable impact: decreased suspensions, improved behavior, and higher engagement among students and staff (RAND Corporation, 2019; WestEd, 2022). The shift happens when RP becomes the foundation for how people relate to each other, not just a strategy used after harm.
Model Restorative Practices as Adults
School culture doesn’t change just because of student compliance—it shifts when adults model consistency, reflection, empathy, and accountability and then help students meet this same expectation. Whether in team meetings or student interactions, the way adults respond to stress, misbehavior, or disagreement directly shapes the school climate.
Using Restorative Practices as adults means:
Regulating yourself before addressing others
Naming impact without blame
Listening before responding
Repairing when trust is broken
Holding students accountable while providing support
Practicing what you expect from students
When staff use Restorative Practices among each other—not just with students—school culture becomes more aligned, honest, and resilient.
Which Of The Following Can Improve A School's Culture?
Restorative Practices stand out because they give people a structure to do the hard but essential work of building community, restoring relationships, and sharing responsibility. But implementation matters. A strong school culture is built through routines and systems that make connections predictable, not left to chance.
Effective implementation of restorative practices
Implementation starts with clarity of purpose and shared language. It requires training, coaching, and structures that ensure adults have what they need to practice with confidence. One-off workshops won’t shift culture. But when schools build leadership capacity, gather stakeholder voices, and create sustainable structures, Restorative Practices can become embedded into daily operations.
In-person training sessions for staff and students
In-person training matters because school culture is relational work. Educators benefit most when they experience Restorative Practices, not just learn about them. Live modeling, collaborative activities, and coaching create the kind of “felt sense” that drives buy-in and behavior change. At Collaborative School Culture, we’ve found that in-person learning—especially when it mirrors the relational strategies being taught—is essential for shifting practice.
Enhanced teacher-student relationships
Relational trust is not just a feel-good outcome—it’s a key predictor of academic outcomes and staff retention (Learning Policy Institute, 2021). Restorative Practices offer educators the tools to build and maintain strong student relationships, even through challenges. When students feel emotionally safe and respected, they are more likely to stay engaged, take risks in their learning, and contribute positively to the community.
How To Fix A Toxic School Culture?
Toxic school culture often shows up as blame, fear, silos, or constant reactivity. Restorative Practices help schools name and interrupt those patterns by creating space for honest reflection, communication and empathy, shared accountability, and relational repair. Fixing culture isn’t about being "nicer"—it’s about being more intentional, consistent, and aligned.
Use Restorative Practices to Address Conflicts
Responsive practices such as curbside conversations, restorative conversations, responsive class circles, and facilitated re-entry meetings provide a path forward after harm. These processes prioritize the needs of those harmed, give voice to all impacted, and create space for learning, not just punishment. When students participate in these conversations, they develop skills in perspective-taking, emotional regulation, accountability, and problem-solving.
Encourage Communication and Empathy Among Staff and Students
To effectively convert a toxic school culture, it's essential to promote open communication channels among all stakeholders. School-wide structures that support honest communication, reflection, and curiosity build empathy across roles and identities. Whether through circle practice, staff reflection protocols, or student voice forums, these relational tools build the connective tissue that a strong school culture relies on.
Operationalizing these interactions not only builds trust but also fosters a nurturing environment where everyone feels heard and valued.
Provide Opportunities for Reflection and Personal Growth
Culture shifts when people have time to pause and reflect, and when structures are in place to communicate and plan. Reflection is baked into Restorative Practices—not as a luxury, but as a necessity. Our four-step framework at Collaborative School Culture (Calm, Reflect, Repair, Plan) helps both adults and students slow down, learn from missteps, and make intentional choices moving forward.
What Does A Positive School Culture Look Like?
Positive school culture is more than smiles and slogans—it’s a deep, relational web where people feel safe, seen, and supported. In these schools, expectations are clear and consistent. Relationships are strong and resilient. Accountability and support are both high. Staff collaborate regularly and address conflict rather than avoid it. Students know their voices matter and trust that adults will respond with fairness and care.
Strong, Respectful Relationships Among Staff and Students
At the heart of a positive school culture are strong and respectful relationships among staff and students. These relationships are nurtured not only through classroom instruction but also through consistent, intentional engagement and interaction. Educators serve as role models by demonstrating empathy and open communication, setting the standard for students. When restorative practices are ingrained into the ethos of a school, conversations after conflicts focus on understanding and learning rather than placing blame.
A Sense of Community and Mutual Support
In strong cultures, connection is not left to chance. Circles, routines, and rituals give students and staff regular opportunities to connect, build trust, and share experiences. Community is not an abstract value—it’s a lived experience that is co-created every day. A thriving school culture fosters a strong sense of community, shared responsibility, and mutual support. Restorative Practices help schools operationalize respect by equipping staff with tools to build relationships, set boundaries, express impact, and repair when needed. These practices keep relationships strong even when things go wrong.
Proactive Relationship-Building and Conflict Resolution
Schools with healthy cultures invest in building the conditions that prevent harm, not just reacting when things fall apart. Proactive circles, regular check-ins, shared language for feedback, and student-led initiatives all build the skills that help students and adults navigate relationships more effectively. When conflicts do occur, rather than exclusively using punitive measures, schools also use restorative approaches to foster dialogue and understanding, effectively teaching students crucial life skills for managing disagreements constructively.
Ultimately, a school with a positive culture is where academic learning and personal growth go hand in hand, supported by a nurturing environment that embodies the values of trust, empathy, and shared responsibility. This is something that Collaborative School Culture aims to achieve in schools by integrating comprehensive restorative practices to promote lasting positive change.
Improving school culture is not a quick fix—it’s a systems-level commitment to how we relate, lead, teach, and grow together. Restorative Practices provide the tools to make that commitment visible and sustainable. They offer not only strategies for responding to harm, but also the daily routines, structures, and habits that help schools prevent harm, build trust, and foster shared responsibility.
At Collaborative School Culture, we support districts in making Restorative Practices stick through training, coaching, implementation design, and strategic leadership development. If your school is ready to move beyond surface-level initiatives and build a culture rooted in connection and accountability, we’re ready to partner with you.
Let’s co-create the kind of school culture where everyone thrives. Contact Collaborative School Culture and discover the profound impact our training can have by engaging with our specialists and transforming your school into a thriving, harmonious community.